1 Analyzing Secularization and Religiosity in Asia

Political scientists long ignored the phenomenon of religion. We have tended to accept the secularization thesis without question and thus assumed that the influence of religion was in ineluctable decline. No need to study something that will not be around much longer. In addition, we tended to think of religion as something totally separate, and as something that should be kept totally separate, from politics. Religion is otherworldly. Politics is this worldly. The two spheres occupy different worlds and there is no need for those who live in one world to study those who live in the other. For several reasons, however, we are no longer able to ignore the impact of religion on politics. Most obviously, “Religion is the source of some of the most remarkable political mobilizations of our time.... ” (Jelen and Wilcox, 2002:1; see also Kalyvas, 2003). The Iranian revolution was the trigger that forced political scientists, and many others, to recognize the power of religion in politics (Lapidus, 2002: 482ff), but the success of the Bharathya Janatha Party (BJP), the Hindu nationalist party, in India (Jaffrelot, 1996) and the rise of the religious right in the United States also surprised most political scientists. Religious revivals are occurring in China an